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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23910001">remember that's the way it used to be</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems'>winter_hiems</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alex Summers Lives, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Image, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Cuddling, Darwin Lives, Don't copy to another site, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Angst, Nightmares, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Self-Esteem Issues, Sharing a Bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:16:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,458</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23910001</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After he escapes the facility where he’s spent years being experimented on, Darwin wants nothing more than to meet up with Alex again so that he can live a life.</p>
<p>Disfigured by the explosion in ’83, Alex has retreated from the world and wants nothing to do with anything anymore.</p>
<p>(In which Darwin lives, Alex has self-esteem issues, and they finally get together.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armando Muñoz/Alex Summers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Darwin didn’t feel old.
</p><p>
He knew that he should. He<i> was</i> old. When he caught sight of his distorted reflection in the stainless steel of the sink in the corner of his cell, there were lines around his eyes and grey in his close-cropped hair.
</p><p>
When he was a young man he’d always worn his hair short, but Darwin decided that if he ever got out of this place then he’d grow it long. Wear it in braids or something. Even with wrinkles, he still had the looks to pull off something like that.
</p><p>
And in spite of the creaking of his joints and the grey in his hair, he didn’t feel old. He supposed it was because he’d always thought of old in terms of milestones.
</p><p>
Up until the age of fifteen, he’d thought that his life milestones would be: graduate, get a job, meet a girl, get married, have kids, raise kids, retire.
</p><p>
When he was fifteen he figured out something about himself, and his milestones changed to: graduate, get a job, meet a boy, move in with him, live together as ‘close friends and bachelors’, find an excuse so that his parents would be okay with him never giving them grandchildren, retire.
</p><p>
Except he’d only managed the first two. The first three if you counted Alex, and some days Darwin felt like what he’d had with Alex had been so brief that it barely counted at all. What did a few kisses in a supply closet mean, when they’d been separated so soon after?
</p><p>
Darwin couldn’t remember much after Shaw had put that ball of light down his throat. The next thing he knew he’d been strapped to a gurney and listening to two scientists talking about him like he wasn’t there, discussing how hard it had been for them to put his body back together, how it was close to a miracle that the pieces had reformed with his brain functions intact.
</p><p>
And then for the next however-many years, Darwin had been a science experiment.
</p><p>
By this stage, he was mostly surprised that they could still find different things to do to him.
</p><p>
Holding flames to his skin. Electrocution. Shoving him in the water to see the <i>exact way</i> in which his body adapted to survive drowning.
</p><p>
Once they had even taken a strip of skin from his thigh to see if it would adapt when it wasn’t attached to his body. There had been some talk of flaying him completely to make an adaptable suit. Except that the skin hadn’t been able to adapt to anything at all, so they’d just bandaged his leg up and sent him back to his cell. He didn’t even have a scar.
</p><p>
Darwin reckoned that he must have been in an out of cells and operating rooms for decades. It must be the eighties now, or maybe even the nineties.
</p><p>
He tried to picture what the nineteen-nineties would look like, and came up with nothing.
</p><p>
And in spite of all the time that had passed, he didn’t feel old.
</p><p>
Those milestones that he’d wanted to pass would now never be reached, and because of that, he didn’t think that he’d ever feel properly old.
</p><p>
And in this shithole of a cell, the only milestones Darwin was likely to reach were dying during an experiment and being buried in an unmarked grave.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It’s my headcanon that Darwin’s skin doesn’t scar.</p><p>Comments and kudos are always welcome &lt;3</p><p>Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. The characters are owned by Marvel. I am not profiting financially from this story.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They were going to sell him.
</p><p>
They thought he hadn’t heard them, but he had. The whispers in the corridor outside his cell.
</p><p>
The facility had run out of both money and mutants; Darwin was currently the only captive. Whoever ran this place was shutting it down, and to make a bit of money while they tied up loose ends, they were going to sell him on the black market. Apparently there was a thriving underground trade in mutants, and the nature of Darwin’s mutation mean that he didn’t even need a control collar to be contained – all it took was a strong pair of handcuffs.
</p><p>
Darwin felt sick. He’d been involved in enough civil rights protests back in the day to feel cold hard fury at the possibility of being sold.
</p><p>
<i>I am not their experiment. I am not a piece of meat. I am not gonna be some rich human’s</i> pet.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
When the opportunity presented itself, it was too good to miss.
</p><p>
They were moving him in an armoured van. The back of the van had a bench along either side and a hatch that could be pulled across to talk to the driver.
</p><p>
Darwin sat on the bench with a guard to either side of him.
</p><p>
Uncountable hours into the journey, the guard that sat nearest to the door started to fall asleep.
</p><p>
Once Darwin was sure that he was asleep, he started faking drowsiness himself. It wasn’t hard. All he had to do was loll his head and slump his shoulders.
</p><p>
On his right, the guard that was still awake started to relax. Darwin could hear him sniff, the rasp of his clothing as he shifted to a more comfortable sitting position.
</p><p>
He didn’t want to make any rash moves, so he counted to two hundred slowly in his head, and then he acted.
</p><p>
He slammed an elbow into the awake guard’s head, stunning him, wrenched the lock on the back door open, and then he was half-jumping, half-falling out of the van onto a freeway.
</p><p>
It was pitch black, the road empty.
</p><p>
His skin had hardened when he hit the road, but as he stumbled to his feet he felt it return to normal. His eyes sharpened to give him night vision.
</p><p>
Up ahead, the van was still driving, but erratically. Darwin could hear the guards in the back yelling at the driver to stop.
</p><p>
He sprinted into the woods on the side of the road, started running parallel in the direction that the van had been driving. The last thing he needed was to end up back near the facility.
</p><p>
Behind him he could hear the guards starting to crash through the trees, yelling at him to come back. A gunshot pierced the air, but the bullet didn’t go anywhere near him.
</p><p>
The night was dark, the ground was rough enough for his feet to increase their toughness, his hands were still cuffed, and he was being chased.
</p><p>
But Darwin could run much faster than an ordinary human, and the shouts behind him faded as he sped through the night with the elation of a newly-freed man.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
It took walking all through the night and into the next day before he found himself on the outskirts of a town.
</p><p>
Handcuffed, barefoot, and dressed in stained white sweatpants and an equally worn white t-shirt, he knew that he couldn’t risk going into the town during the day.
</p><p>
After waiting all afternoon and all evening on the edge of the woods, Darwin entered the town at what he supposed was sometime after midnight.
</p><p>
He walked through the suburbs for what felt like an age before he found what he was looking for: a clothesline.
</p><p>
Stealing didn’t feel good, but he also didn’t have a choice, so he grabbed a pair of jeans and a hoodie off the line. He dumped the sweatpants in a trash can and pulled the jeans on. They were a little loose, but they would do. He couldn’t put the hoodie on while he was wearing the cuffs, so he slung it over his shoulder.
</p><p>
Another half-hour of walking brought him the final piece of his outfit: a pair of running shoes left outside someone’s back door. He jumped the garden fence and pulled them on. They were a size small, but being barefoot while he walked around the town was bound to get him noticed.
</p><p>
Darwin passed a house with a vegetable garden, and he hopped the fence there as well to help himself to a few carrots, hoping that they wouldn’t be missed. It would hold off hunger for the time being.
</p><p>
He’d passed a park on the way to the suburbs, so now that he had clothes and shoes he made his way there. He used the public toilets and considered giving himself a wash with the water from the sink, but decided against it. Wet clothes would make the chill of the night feel worse, and he was still mostly clean.
</p><p>
So he went outside, sat on a bench, spread the hoodie over himself like a blanket, and went to sleep.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
He was woken by the dawn, and spent the next few hours wandering around the town, getting the lay of the land.
</p><p>
While he walked, Darwin was careful to keep the hoodie draped over his hands. It was an odd way of carrying it, but it did a good job of hiding the handcuffs.
</p><p>
As he passed a news stand, Darwin glanced at the date on one of the newspapers, and nearly stopped dead. He forced himself to keep walking – stopping in the middle of the street would get him noticed, and he couldn’t risk getting noticed. He turned into an alley, brought his hands to his face, buried his face in the hoodie, and whimpered.
</p><p>
The twenty-first century.
</p><p>
It wasn’t the nineteen-eighties. It wasn’t the nineteen-nineties. It was the twenty-first century.
</p><p>
The humans who’d kept him captive had stolen five decades of his life.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Once the tears had dried up, he waited twenty or so minutes so that he was sure his eyes weren’t puffy anymore. Looking like he’d been crying was another sure-fire way of getting himself unwanted attention.
</p><p>
With the twenty minutes up, he made his way to the public library. He’d seen it that morning, though it hadn’t been open yet. And he’d seen the computers inside that were for public use.
</p><p>
He sat himself right at the back, where nobody would notice his cuffed hands. Darwin had never actually used a computer before, but he knew what the mouse and the keyboard and the screen were all for, and he knew what Google was, so he figured it couldn’t be too hard.
</p><p>
During his walk that morning, he’d considered his options.
</p><p>
The CIA mutant project was unlikely to still be running after all this time, and if it was, it would probably be unrecognisable from how it had been in sixty-two.
</p><p>
His parents were definitely both dead.
</p><p>
Which left him with one option: Charles Xavier.
</p><p>
Charles would be in his early seventies by now, but he’d been healthy in sixty-two and he was rich and smart, so he was probably both still alive and a public figure.
</p><p>
Typing on the keyboard was difficult with cuffed hands, but once he got the name in, Darwin found exactly what he needed: The Xavier Institute for the Gifted.
</p><p>
A map in a leaflet on a display table in the library told Darwin the name of the town and its relation to other towns in America, and by the afternoon Darwin was walking out of there. He’d been a damn good taxi driver in his day, and he knew how to plan a route.
</p><p>
He got to walking.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Darwin was tired. The kind of bone-deep exhaustion that made him want to drop right there on the ground and go to sleep, but he couldn’t. He was so close.
</p><p>
The gates to Charles’ school were locked, but there was a camera built into one of the gateposts with a button and a microphone underneath. Leaning against the post and swaying slightly, Darwin pressed the button and held it until a gruff voice crackled from the speaker. “State your name and your business.”
</p><p>
“Uh, could you tell Charles that Darwin’s here to see him? I know it’s been a while, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
</p><p>
“Sure, just wait there.”
</p><p>
Five minutes later, a man in a wheelchair was coming down the driveway towards the gate. It took Darwin about ten seconds to recognise Charles Xavier.
</p><p>
The second that Charles had opened the gate the two of them were hugging, made awkward by Darwin’s cuffed hands and tears on both sides.
</p><p>
The hug went on for a while, but Darwin wasn’t complaining. He’d never complain about the first kindness he’d been shown in half a century.
</p><p>
When they finally pulled apart, Charles said, “When we go to the house we can get those cuffs off. And then you must tell me everything.”
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Charles’ house was huge and beautiful and full of mutants.
</p><p>
Darwin had never imagined that there could be so many mutants in the world, let alone in one building in Westchester. A woman with red hair named Jean waved her hand and his cuffs came off, then Charles took Darwin into his office where they could catch up while Darwin made his way through four pieces of toast that he’d picked up from the kitchen.
</p><p>
He hadn’t really had much to tell. He didn’t want to dwell on the painful memories of what had been done to him, so after he told Charles about how he’d been put back together, he glossed over the intervening time, only getting to details when he recounted how he’d escaped.
</p><p>
And once he was done with his story, it was his turn to ask the questions. It had been fifty years: what had happened to the others in the CIA mutant project?
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Moira MacTaggert had quit the CIA and started research into mutant genetics that earned her a Nobel Prize. She was living in Scotland now.
</p><p>
Sean had a daughter who attended Charles’ school. She’d inherited her father’s sonic scream.
</p><p>
Hank worked in a lab in New York City.</p><p>
Angel was dead.
</p><p>
And Erik and Raven…
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
“He shot you?” Darwin couldn’t hide his shock. Charles and Erik had been practically inseparable back then.
</p><p>
“He didn’t intend to,” said Charles softly, “And I’m used to the wheelchair now, I really am.”
</p><p>
“But the rest? Leaving you on that beach? Leading the Brotherhood of Mutants? And Raven <i>went with him</i>?”
</p><p>
“I know how it sounds.”
</p><p>
Darwin ran a hand across his face. “Jesus… We were such a team back then. More than that, we were friends. We were friends, and those two just – just left?”
</p><p>
Charles nodded, and Darwin saw a brief flash of pain in his face.
</p><p>
Darwin swallowed. He’d been building up to this question ever since he arrived at Charles’ gate.
</p><p>
“Charles… what happened to Alex?”
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
“There was an explosion,” said Charles quietly, and Darwin prepared himself for the worst. “In nineteen eighty-three, there was an explosion, and Alex was closest to the blast. He survived, but he was left with severe scarring to the left side of his face, neck, and torso. It – he didn’t take it well. Alex’s body is designed to convert, process, and contain energy, so his immune system makes skin grafts and plastic surgery impossible. He couldn’t bear the way people were looking at him, so in the end he left the mansion. He has a cabin in the Rockies. His brother visits him sometimes, but aside from that, Alex doesn’t want to see anyone. Or to be more accurate, he doesn’t want anyone to see him.”
</p><p>
“Could – could you tell him that I’m alive? And that I want to see him? I don’t care how he looks, Charles. I just want to see him.”
</p><p>
Charles smiled kindly. “Of course I will. And you don’t have to pretend anymore, either.”
</p><p>
“Pretend about what?”
</p><p>
“Same-sex marriage was legalised in New York in twenty-eleven. I knew that you had feelings for Alex back in sixty-two, but it was dangerous to acknowledge it back then, so I said nothing. Now, however, there’s no need to hide it. Or at least, not from me.”
</p><p>
Darwin could feel himself blushing. “I – okay. I mean, he might not want me that way anymore. But I still want to see him. For old time’s sake.”
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Charles texted Alex, and then he took Darwin to a spare bedroom with the promise that he could stay as long as he wanted.
</p><p>
The bed was soft and there was a change of clothes in the wardrobe, and when he stepped into the en-suite shower the water was warm. Blissfully, welcomingly warm. His first hot shower in uncounted years, and before Darwin really knew what he was doing he was curled up on the floor of the bathtub, sobs shaking his body.
</p><p>
He was out. Free. Never again to be an experiment.
</p><p>
He was a person again.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Eventually, he stood back up and used the soap and the shampoo, revelling in their scents: smooth and clean and slightly chemical.
</p><p>
He got out and dried off and dressed, and then he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.
</p><p>
The reflection was almost a stranger to him. Grey hairs and lines around his eyes and lines around his mouth. He’d never seen his face so thin before.
</p><p>
But underneath it all, it was still his face. Those were his eyes and his cheekbones and his jawline. He was still himself.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
“He said that he doesn’t want to see you,” Charles said apologetically.
</p><p>
Darwin slumped in his chair, something empty opening up in his chest. “Oh,” was all he could manage to say.
</p><p>
Charles smiled sadly. “You mustn’t take it like that, Darwin. He’s self-conscious. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see you, it’s that he’s worried about your reaction to the way he looks.”
</p><p>
“I’ve already told you, I don’t care about whatever scars he has. It’s still him.”
</p><p>
“Which is why I think you should visit him anyway. The mansion has plenty of teleporters. One of them could drop you off at Alex’s cabin and collect you later.”
</p><p>
Darwin swallowed. “But what if – what if he really doesn’t want to see me?”
</p><p>
“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But I believe that he does.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Alex’s facial scarring is inspired by his injuries in Uncanny Avengers issue 22.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Darwin slept a full twelve hours. When he woke, it was to a comfortable bed and soft sheets.
</p><p>
He rolled over onto his side and tried to calm his nerves.<i> I am going to see Alex today. I am going to see him, and talk to him, and I am </i>not<i> going to chicken out.</i>
</p><p>
That morning, he talked to Kurt, the mansion’s resident teleporter. It turned out that he was the son of Raven and Azazel. Darwin had to admit that he wouldn’t have foreseen the two of them getting together, but then again, he hadn’t predicted Raven and Erik becoming terrorists, so… So he’d missed a lot while he was imprisoned. He was trying not to think about it, the sheer volume of time that had been stolen from him.
</p><p>
Kurt agreed to teleport him to Alex’s cabin that afternoon, and to return for him later in the evening.
</p><p>
Which left Darwin with several hours of nothing to do. He briefly considered talking to Alex’s younger brother Scott, but the prospect scared him. He ended up wandering around the mansion and its grounds instead.
</p><p>
Autumn had brought gusts of wind to swirl the fallen leaves, but the gardens were still beautiful. If – if Alex didn’t want him, Darwin wouldn’t mind living here.
</p><p>
And the kids, God, the kids were everywhere. Mutant children running free, unafraid of any kind of harm, happy and confident in their powers. Within the fence surrounding Charles’ property, there was no need to hide what they were.
</p><p>
Maybe if things went well with Alex, he’d be able to persuade him to move closer to the mansion. He’d like to be part of this someday.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
The afternoon came upon him sooner than he thought it would, and before Darwin knew it he was standing outside the border to Alex’s land, with Kurt promising to pick him up in a few hours.
</p><p>
He nodded absentmindedly, and felt the rush of air as Kurt teleported away.
</p><p>
The plot of land that Alex lived on was large enough that you couldn’t see the cabin from the road. There was a padlock on the gate, so Darwin climbed over and started walking up the drive, smoothing down his shirt as he went.
</p><p>
The longer he walked, the more his worry grew. What if Alex didn’t recognise him? What if Alex just didn’t care about him anymore?
</p><p>
When he caught sight of the cabin – medium-sized, one story – he stopped walking for a minute to try and slow his breathing. He didn’t want Alex to see how nervous he was.
</p><p>
His knock on the front door didn’t get a reply.
</p><p>
Darwin peered through the windows but didn’t see anyone. The lights were off. Alex was definitely here, though; his truck was parked out front.
</p><p>
And then Darwin heard the sounds coming from behind the cabin.
</p><p>
Walking slowly, quietly, Darwin went around the side of the cabin, to where a man was chopping wood out the back.
</p><p>
Alex had his back to Darwin as he worked methodically, cutting blocks of firewood down to size. At first, all Darwin could do was watch. Alex had always been strong, and he’d put on more muscle in the years since Darwin had last seen him. Watching the muscles flex under Alex’s shirt reminded Darwin of how thin he was, half-starved by the humans that had kept him captive. He pushed the self-consciousness aside.
</p><p>
“Hey,” said Darwin, softly.
</p><p>
Alex whirled around, then stopped when he saw Darwin. The axe fell from his hand and hit the earth with a dull thud.
</p><p>
For a few moments, they just looked at each other.
</p><p>
Darwin knew what Alex was seeing: grey hairs and wrinkles and hollow cheekbones and clothes hanging loose.
</p><p>
But he didn’t much care. He was too busy looking at Alex.
</p><p>
Alex wore his hair longer than he had in sixty-two, and it was all grey now. Like Darwin, he had frown lines and crows’ feet and lines around his mouth.
</p><p>
Unlike Darwin, he had scars.
</p><p>
The burns covered almost all of the left side of his face, three decades healed and waxy pale. It had left his features slightly distorted; his left eye was hooded in scar tissue; the left side of his mouth contorted; his left nostril slightly stretched. His left ear was gone, just a hole in the side of his head. There was no hair on the left side of his head either, just scarred, mottled skin. The scars continued down the left side of his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt.
</p><p>
The strangest thing wasn’t the scars themselves, though. It was the fact that Darwin could still see Alex underneath them. Those were Alex’s cheekbones and Alex’s jawline and Alex’s beautiful blue eyes.
</p><p>
For just a moment, the two men looked at each other, before Alex said hoarsely, “Darwin.”
</p><p>
“Yeah, it’s me.”
</p><p>
“Charles said you were alive. And I told him, fuck, I told him I didn’t want you to see me.”
</p><p>
“Well, I’m here now.”
</p><p>
Alex turned away and picked up the wood he’d chopped. “’Guess you’d better come in.” He led the way into the cabin.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
“You want a beer?” asked Alex. When he spoke, he couldn’t move the left side of his mouth properly.
</p><p>
“Better not,” said Darwin. “I mean, I haven’t had alcohol in decades, it’ll probably go straight to my head.”
</p><p>
“Okay. I’m gonna have one.”
</p><p>
Alex had heated up some soup, and then he drank his beer while Darwin talked and they both ate. By the time Darwin was done talking, they were both done eating, and Alex said, “Well shit.”
</p><p>
“Yeah.”
</p><p>
“That’s – what they did to you, that’s awful.”
</p><p>
“I know.”
</p><p>
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “But still, you shouldn’t have come here, Darwin. I really didn’t want you to see – to see this.” He gestured to the scar.
</p><p>
“It’s not so bad.”
</p><p>
Alex huffed. “Well that’s a fucking lie. I can’t get groceries without being stared at.” He paused, then went on. “Did Charles tell you that it’s my own stupid fault, too? I was trying to save him from – oh, it doesn’t matter who – and I sent off a beam, and they fucking dodged. The blast hit a reactor and the next thing I know, half my face is gone. Worst part is, I didn’t even save the Professor. It was the X-Men that did that. I was too busy being unconscious to help.”
</p><p>
“Hey,” said Darwin softly. He reached across the table and took Alex’s hand. “You shouldn’t blame yourself, man.”
</p><p>
Alex pulled his hand away and stood up quickly. “Don’t, Darwin. Just don’t.” He gathered the bowls and took them to the kitchen, and Darwin heard him put the radio on as he started washing up, a clear sign that he didn’t want to talk.
</p><p>
Darwin sat at the table and wondered what he could do next. He wanted Alex. Wherever Alex was, he wanted to be there too.
</p><p>
He could still remember their first kiss. It had just been the two of them alone in the rec room of the CIA base, playing pool, and Alex had said something and Darwin had laughed, and then Alex had looked at him, his usually hard gaze full of tenderness, and he’d taken Darwin’s hand.
</p><p>
Alex’s grip on Darwin’s fingers had been loose, loose enough that it would be easy for Darwin to break his grip if he didn’t want to go with Alex, holding onto Darwin’s hand just enough to guide him out of the rec room and down the corridor.
</p><p>
As they’d walked, Darwin had murmured, “Where are you taking me?”, and Alex had replied: “Some place with no security cameras.”
</p><p>
He’d led Darwin to a supply closet, barely enough room for the both of them. Alex had let go of Darwin’s hand so that he could fumble and turn the light on, and then it had been the two of them standing chest to chest under a bare lightbulb.
</p><p>
Darwin couldn’t remember who had leaned in first, but soon enough they’d been kissing. Deep, intense kisses. Their arms around each other and then their hands slipping under each other’s shirts, and all the time, kissing.
</p><p>
How had he and Alex gone from that to this? And how on earth could Darwin fix it?
</p><p>
As he’d sat at the table thinking, he realised that Alex had finished with the washing up and was just standing in the kitchen, hands braced on the edge of the counter, back to the open doorway.
</p><p>
The radio was still playing. Darwin recognised the tune: <i>Hello Stranger</i>. When he woke up in the facility, the scientists had been listening to the radio to pass the time, and <i>Hello Stranger</i> had been playing. Perhaps it would have made sense for Darwin to associate that song with the beginning of decades of pain, but he didn’t. For him, it would always be tied up in the realisation that he was still alive, that his life hadn’t stopped when Shaw pushed that ball of light down his throat, that he had kept going, could probably keep going for a while longer.
</p><p>
It was a song of beginnings.
</p><p>
Darwin was up and out of the chair before he properly knew what he was going to do, but by the time he reached the door to the kitchen he was decided.
</p><p>
He went into the kitchen and took Alex’s hand, turning him slowly until they were face to face.
</p><p>
“What’re you doing?” Alex mumbled.
</p><p>
“You’ll figure it out,” he said softly.
</p><p>
Darwin put his left hand on Alex’s shoulder, took Alex’s left hand in his right, and started to sway. After a few seconds, Alex got the picture and placed his free hand on Darwin’s waist. They weren’t properly dancing, just swaying on the spot, and not even properly in time to the music, but Darwin didn’t care.
</p><p>
By the time the song ended they were leaning against each other, Darwin’s smooth cheek against Alex’s scarred one, and then Alex turned his head and they were kissing.
</p><p>
It was nothing like it had been in sixty-two. There was no roughness, no urgency. Just the gentle press of Alex’s lips against his.
</p><p>
After they pulled away, Alex murmured, “When Charles told me that you were alive, I cried like a fucking baby.” He paused. “I have clothes you could borrow, if you wanted to stay the night. I could text Charles and tell him not to send Kurt back here. If you wanted to stay.”
</p><p>
“I’d like that.”
</p><p>
“I mean, fuck, I haven’t been with anyone since,” he rubbed the scarred side of his neck, “Since this. I’m probably not that good anymore, but…”
</p><p>
“I’d still like that.”
</p><p>
And then Alex was leading him by the hand again, lightly, like the walk to the supply closet all those years ago, but this time it was to Alex’s bedroom.
</p><p>
Once they were inside, Darwin shut the door behind them and turned back to Alex, and realised that Alex was trying not to cry.
</p><p>
“I –” said Alex. “The burns go down my neck and over my shoulder. And the upper part of my arm. If that’s okay with you.”
</p><p>
Darwin closed the distance between them, Alex’s arms wrapping around him. He kissed Alex’s unscarred right cheek, then switched sides to bury his face in the scarred skin that was the left side of Alex’s neck. “It’s okay with me.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The dancing to<i> Hello Stranger </i>is slightly inspired by the ending of Moonlight (amazing movie, by the way). The song was released in 1963, so it fits the timeline for my fic nicely.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he woke, Alex was confused by the weight on the bed beside him, before he remembered last night.
</p><p>
Darwin was still asleep next to him, all dark skin and distracting collarbones and sharp lines.
</p><p>
Alex had been briefly shocked last night, when Darwin took off his shirt and he saw how thin he was, how much of him had been stripped back by the human fuckers who’d kept him imprisoned. But time could fix that. Hell, Alex could fix that. He was a half-decent cook.
</p><p>
Time couldn’t fix Alex’s scars. Darwin had been nice about it, last night, but Alex knew that the melted skin across his shoulder and around his bicep wasn’t pretty, and his face was worse. He’d been glad when they finally turned the lights out.
</p><p>
Right now, Alex was lying on his left side, face half-pressed into the pillow so that when Darwin woke he could see Alex’s good side. Maybe it was vain of him and maybe it was kind of pathetic, but it wasn’t as if there was anyone around to judge.
</p><p>
He was almost dozing off again when Darwin sat bolt upright, breathing heavily, and all thoughts of his appearance were gone from Alex’s head.
</p><p>
He sat up beside Darwin and put an arm around his shoulders. If he turned his head Darwin would get an eyeful of Alex’s scars, but Alex didn’t care about that right now. “It’s okay, you got out, it’s okay.”
</p><p>
“Yeah,” Darwin’s breathing slowed, and he leaned back against Alex’s chest. “I got out.”
</p><p>
They stayed like that for a while, before they shifted to a more comfortable position, Alex lying back with Darwin resting his head on Alex’s chest.
</p><p>
After a while longer, Alex stroked Darwin’s hair and said. “So how come my hair’s all grey and you’ve only got streaks, huh?”
</p><p>
“Just lucky, I guess.” Darwin’s breath was warm against Alex’s chest.  “I’ve been thinking of growing it out, getting braids, y’know?”
</p><p>
“How long?”
</p><p>
“Like, all down my back.”
</p><p>
“Sounds sexy.”
</p><p>
Darwin laughed in a way that made Alex’s chest go tight. “Oh, it’s gonna be sexy. It’s gonna be so sexy you won’t know what to do with yourself, Summers.”
</p><p>
“You’re in bed with me. I already barely know what to do with myself.”
</p><p>
Darwin chuckled. “You knew what to do last night.”
</p><p>
“Yeah because by some sheer fucking luck I still have the barest bit of muscle memory left for that sort of thing.”
</p><p>
“Oh, you’ve got plenty of muscle. Seriously, how does a guy your age stay in a shape this good?”
</p><p>
Alex shrugged against the pillows. “Nothing to do out here except chop wood and work out.”
</p><p>
Darwin made an “mmm” sound and shifted against Alex’s chest.
</p><p>
They stayed like that for a while, until morning had fully lightened the sky. Then Alex eased himself out from under Darwin, and kissed him softly. “You stay right there. Breakfast in bed, my treat.”
</p><p>
“Sure,” said Darwin, rolling onto his back. “Just one thing, first.”
</p><p>
“Yeah, what?”
</p><p>
Darwin kissed him again.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
In the end, Darwin did end up passing some more milestones: move in with boyfriend, take boyfriend out on dates, persuade boyfriend to move to Westchester so that you can work at the school, take boyfriend out on more dates, propose to boyfriend, watch boyfriend-now-fiancé cry as he puts the ring on his finger, marry fiancé.
</p><p>
He still wasn’t sure about retiring, though.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I think that pretty soon after they got together, Darwin broke out the pet names. Calling Alex ‘handsome’ and ‘baby’ and ‘darling’, and Alex had no idea how to handle it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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